In w eek 1 of our Figma training, we simply looked at the basics of Figma and discussed where we felt we were at. As I only began to use Figma at the start of this semester, I had around 6 weeks of experience using it at this point. The majority of my peers seemed to be at a similar point.
As this was simply an introduction session to the training that we would receive over the following weeks, there wasn’t much complex practical work involved. However, to employ our current knowledge and ensure that we knew the basic functions of Figma, we completed an activity that involved creating a ‘introduction’ frame, involving our name and any personal details that we wished to include.
I found this a fun exercise to put my current Figma skills to the text, however I found it to be more difficult that I thought it would be. I aimed to employ at least one aspect of point, line and place as this aligns with one of the projects I am currently working on. I feel that this was the hardest aspect, as I struggled to create a layout that would allow room for text.
I went with colours that I felt worked together, although on reflection I can see that my colour contrast wasn’t great, as I would definitely aim to focus on this more in future.
Furthermore, we focused on using the ‘blend’ tool. This is a tool that recolours a selected area or frame, a means of experimenting with colour contrast and interactions. I was interested to hear that this tool is frequently used by designers to quickly create a wide range of colour experimentations. Through my own work I understood this, as before using the Blend tool I thought that my colour scheme was bright and vibrant enough, however upon using blend I found more colour schemes that I felt created a more cohesive, visually appealing design. In particular, I found two blend options to be my favourite, these are shown below:
Blend - Difference One of the blend options I used was difference. This simply created a slighly darker shade of the background colour, creating a higher contrast between the text and background. I was very happy with this and to my suprise, preferred it to the original. I feel that this is a good example of ‘playing it safe’ with colours. My initial design was very muted, the colours weren’t very vibrant, as I didn’t want the design to be too busy or distracting.
Blend - Hard Light Based on my experience with using the blend tool above, I decided to go with something that completely changes my original design, as I may end up preferring it. I went with hard light, which essentially darkens and increases the vibrancy of the colours in the selected area. As expected, this ended up being by favourite as the darker background enh9anced readability and I felt that the less muted colours created a more visually interesting design.
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Overall, I quite enjoyed week 7’s introduction to Figma Training. I feel like I gained some useful understanding of the software and gained skills that will help me in the future. In particular, I will definitely use the blend tool in my future projects as I was able to easily experiment with colour combinations and ended up, in my opinion, significantly improving my work. I was glad to focus on this today as I wasn’t aware that Figma had this function beforehand.
I am looking forwards to the following weeks of Figma training to learn more about skills, tools and more features that I could employ in my future projects.
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